As areal densities increase, smaller bit cells are required in the magnetic medium (track width and bit length). However, superparamagnetic instabilities become an issue as the grain volume (i.e., the number of grains in the media per bit cell) of the recording medium is reduced in order to control media noise for high areal density recording. The superparamagnetic effect is most evident when the grain volume V is sufficiently small that the inequality KuV/kBT>70 can no longer be maintained. Ku is the material's magnetic crystalline anisotropy energy density, kB is Boltzmann's constant, and T is absolute temperature. When this inequality is not satisfied, thermal energy demagnetizes the stored bits. Therefore, as the grain size is decreased in order to increase the areal density, a threshold is reached for a given material Ku and temperature T such that stable data storage is no longer feasible.
The thermal stability can be improved by employing a recording medium formed of a material with a very high Ku. However, with available materials the recording heads are not able to provide a sufficient or high enough magnetic writing field to write on such a medium. Accordingly, it has been proposed to overcome the recording head field limitations by employing thermal energy to heat a local area on the recording medium before or at about the time of applying the magnetic write field to the medium.
Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) generally refers to the concept of locally heating a recording medium to reduce the coercivity of the recording medium so that the applied magnetic writing field can more easily direct the magnetization of the recording medium during the temporary magnetic softening of the recording medium caused by the heat source. HAMR allows for the use of small grain media, which is desirable for recording at increased areal densities, with a larger magnetic anisotropy at room temperature to assure sufficient thermal stability. HAMR can be applied to any type of magnetic storage media, including tilted media, longitudinal media, perpendicular media and patterned media. By heating the medium, the Ku or the coercivity is reduced such that the magnetic write field is sufficient to write to the medium. Once the medium cools to ambient temperature, the medium has a sufficiently high value of coercivity to assure thermal stability of the recorded information.
Most magnetic recording heads used in magnetic recording systems today are longitudinal magnetic recording heads. However, longitudinal magnetic recording in its conventional form has been projected to suffer from superparamagnetic instabilities at high bit densities. An alternative to longitudinal recording that overcomes at least some of the problems associated with the superparamagnetic effect is perpendicular magnetic recording. Perpendicular magnetic recording is believed to have the capability of extending recording densities well beyond the limits of longitudinal magnetic recording. A magnetic recording head used with a perpendicular magnetic storage medium may include a pair of magnetically coupled poles, including a main write pole having a relatively small bottom surface area and a flux return pole having a larger bottom surface area. A coil having a plurality of turns is located adjacent to the main write pole for inducing a magnetic field between the pole and a soft underlayer of the storage media. The soft underlayer is located below the hard magnetic recording layer of the storage media and enhances the amplitude of the field produced by the main pole. This, in turn, allows the use of storage media with higher coercive force, and consequently, more stable bits can be stored in the media. In the recording process, an electrical current in the coil energizes the main pole, which produces a magnetic field. The image of this field is produced in the soft underlayer to enhance the field strength produced in the magnetic media. The flux density that diverges from the tip into the soft underlayer returns through the return flux pole. The return pole is located sufficiently far apart from the main write pole such that the material of the return pole does not affect the magnetic flux of the main write pole, which is directed vertically into the hard layer and the soft underlayer of the storage media.
When applying a heat or light source to the medium, it is desirable to confine the heat or light to the track where writing is taking place and to generate the write field in close proximity to where the medium is heated to accomplish high areal density recording. In addition, for heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) one of the technological hurdles to overcome is to provide an optical transducer capable of delivering large amounts of light power to the recording medium confined to spots of, for example, 100 nm or less. Furthermore, because magnetic recording poles are typically made of materials that are strongly absorptive and dissipative at optical frequencies (e.g., FeNi, FeCo, CoNiFe), the design and placement of the magnetic poles relative to the optical transducer are important.